What's a drum and bugle corps? It's like a major-league marching band, and a Rosemont group is among the best.

Cavaliers Drum and Bugle Corps covers country during summer run

They arrived in north central Illinois early on a June morning, slept a few hours on a middle school floor, spent the day sweating on a makeshift football field and then competed in a stadium that evening. Before midnight, their caravan of charter buses and semitrailers would be back on the road for a 450-mile trek to Ohio.

The Cavaliers Drum and Bugle Corps is the closest thing there is to a major league marching band. The group, based in Rosemont and founded decades ago by Boy Scouts on Chicago's Northwest Side, crisscrosses the nation each summer to perform in New Jersey, Mississippi, Kansas and countless map dots in between.

CaptionPerformance in Indy

Nuccio DiNuzzo, Chicago Tribune

The Cavaliers Drum & Bugle Corps perform during the Drum Corps International World Championships at Lucas Oil Stadium in Indianapolis.

Days like the one in the Rockford area, with at least 12 hours of intense work and little time allotted for sleep, are part of the routine in a season that began in earnest this spring at a suburban elementary school and ends this weekend on an NFL field at theDrum Corps International World Championships.

For the spectators who pack the bleachers and pay good money to watch them compete — or the 116,000 people who follow the corps on Facebook — the Cavaliers are marching celebrities. YouTube videos of their shows rack up tens of thousands of views, and the particularly devoted have been known to request an autograph from their favorite trumpeter.

But beyond that dedicated core of fans, these 150 performers are largely anonymous.

"It's not necessarily a cult following," said John O'Neill, a baritone player from Aurora, "but it's either you're really into it or probably don't know what it is."

April

Spaced evenly in an arc around the Rosemont Elementary gym, each young man plucked the silver mouthpiece from his instrument and wrapped it with a balloon. For nearly an hour, they practiced breathing in and out in rhythm, the red and yellow and royal blue latex inflating in unison, then deflating with a mass wheezing noise.

To the untrained ear, it all sounded the same. But to the instructors roaming the gym and shouting tips like "No puffing cheeks, please," each bulging balloon held significance. At one point, frustrated with the effort, a director asked how many members had failed to practice with balloons the previous week. Sheepishly, most of the musicians raised a hand.

"Shame on you," the instructor shot back. "This should be five minutes of your routine every day."

Though the Cavaliers are similar in many ways to a marching band, members bristle at that label. The music they play sounds more like a symphony's repertoire than a high school fight song. And unlike most marching bands, drum corps don't include woodwind instruments like saxophones and clarinets.

Members arrived in Rosemont early Friday evening, some from a few miles away and others from as far as Belgium. Until Sunday afternoon, they did little other than practice, going to bed late on the gymnasium floor and rising early.

In addition to the balloon exercises that are designed to help visualize air output, the corps had expected members to come to this weekendlong camp with every note of the 101/2-minute show memorized. They'd been assigned a daily fitness program so they'd be in shape for the difficult maneuvers and long rehearsals that awaited them when they reconvened for the summer.

"You're focused on one thing," said Greg Goeden, a second-year member from Batavia. "You wake up, rehearse. Everybody here is working on the same thing."

On Sunday afternoon, before members returned to their hometowns for proms and graduations, they got an impromptu history lesson about the group they were joining.

I have been to about 8 DCI World Championships and they just keep getting better quality and intensity wise. Last night's Quarterfinals (8/7/14) were incredible! The Cavaliers were 6th out of 37 units. Check out www.dci.org for more information on the activity and all of the Drum Corps...

Don Warren, who at age 85 still showed up at practice in Rosemont wearing Cavaliers colors, founded the corps in 1948 as the part-time pursuit of a Boy Scout troop in Logan Square.

Nowadays, hundreds of young men — in a nod to those Boy Scout roots, all Cavaliers are male — audition for coveted spots. The group draws its college- and high school-age members from all over the U.S. and four other countries.

Warren told members the corps was ailing in the 1980s and in desperate need of a sponsor when he approached Rosemont's leaders. The small village near O'Hare International Airport agreed to financially support the nonprofit group, a commitment that has endured.

Today, Rosemont's logo and its mayor's name adorn some of the buses and semitrailers that lug the musicians across the country. Records show the village allocated $150,000 for the corps this fiscal year. The group is also supported through donations, fundraisers and the membership dues marchers pay.

The Cavaliers are among more than 30 drum corps that compete on the circuit, and they've long been among the elite. Though most members are quick to say rankings aren't the most important part of what they do, the undercurrent of competition is strong.

Last year, the group placed seventh at the world championships in Indianapolis — a very respectable finish, but not what's hoped for in a corps that has won seven titles since 1992. Before this season, the group hired several new instructors, and, like any squad yearning for a return to glory, members talked excitedly about the potential of a young roster and fresh ideas.

"We're going to go back to being the Cavaliers," Warren told members, "and I think we've got the team to do it."

May

The morning started out pleasant, with shade and lingering cool from the previous night's storms in Chicago's western suburbs. But six hours into an all-day rehearsal at Lisle's Benedictine University, the clouds had retreated, humidity had taken over and Goeden was spending most of his water break spraying his upper body with sunscreen.

Goeden is among the stars of the 2014 production. Early in the performance, members lift him above their heads and toss him to and fro in a choreographed struggle.

Eventually, Goeden breaks free, retrieves his trumpet and rejoins the fast-moving formations that might march 12 steps in one direction and eight steps backward in another while playing complex music.

But it would still be weeks before Goeden performed that maneuver in competition. This was just the fifth day in about a month of marathon rehearsals, where the focus was on mastering the music and learning the show. Every movement, every note was scrutinized.

Before this midafternoon water break, Goeden and others had jogged and then marched 100 yards down the field without letting their toes touch the ground. Hours more work awaited them, but Goeden said the day's progress had been encouraging.

"Compared to last year, we are very on top of things," said Goeden, 21, who will be too old to compete again next summer. "This is the process."

June

Mosquitoes buzzed in the glow of a Rockford stadium's lights as the smell of hot dogs and diesel fumes mixed in the parking lot. After a month of intense practices, it was opening weekend for the Cavaliers.

Before taking the field, Goeden and Daniel Scott warmed up in silence. They stretched, twisted and lumbered across the grass in formation. Finally, they slipped on their green uniforms and prepared to enter the packed stadium where ardent fans, many wearing their favorite corps' logo, waited to size them up against the competition.

After a while, members say, the days start to meld together, each middle school gymnasium they sleep in and chicken dinner they eat not much different from the last. But here in Rockford, where the Cavaliers would perform in their second competition of about 30, everything still seemed new.

"It was pretty surreal," Scott said, recalling his debut two nights earlier in Indiana. "When I was warming up, I was like, 'Wow, this is my first drum corps performance.' It just felt like a dream."

Scott, 21, joined the Cavaliers with only one year of eligibility before he ages out of the activity. Back home he's an accomplished musician who has served on the marching band staff at Western Carolina University, where he's a student. Here he's a rookie trying to make a name for himself and adjust to the rhythms of life on the road.

"I feel like the hardest thing is kind of learning drum corps life itself," he said. "The vets, they have it down. For us new guys, we're still trying to figure out how everything works."

I have been to about 8 DCI World Championships and they just keep getting better quality and intensity wise. Last night's Quarterfinals (8/7/14) were incredible! The Cavaliers were 6th out of 37 units. Check out www.dci.org for more information on the activity and all of the Drum Corps...

Watching Scott and the others prepare, Graeme Mason reminisced about his years with the group. Mason, who marched from 2000 to 2003, competed during the glory years of the Cavaliers, winning three championships. He has kept in touch, attending a competition or two most years and sometimes watching rehearsals streamed over the Internet. He and his wife decorated a room in their Wisconsin home in Cavaliers colors.

Plenty of other alumni, ranging from 20-somethings with friends still performing to gray-haired retirees who marched decades ago, also stay connected. One spends part of the summer helping in the kitchen. A former Cavalier pays the membership dues and travel expenses of a current member. Another, a podiatrist, fits each member with custom shoe inserts.

July

Mary Waldukat climbed aboard the mobile kitchen in DeKalb, where she was greeted by carrots in the walk-in cooler, brownies on a giant baking pan and a sprawling stove top.

In a few hours, she'd help serve dinner to 200 people, including 150 hungry marchers who just finished competing and about 50 staffers and volunteers. Then, not long after doling out the last chicken nugget, she'd strap down the remaining ingredients and prepare for an overnight ride to Missouri.

"It's not easy cooking for 200 people," said Waldukat, who lives in Berwyn and is among a legion of volunteers who spend part of each summer with the Cavaliers. "I cook for five at home."

When the Cavaliers travel, they're a city on wheels. Members ride in three charter buses, with others for staff and volunteers. Two semitrailers haul tubas, drums and other equipment. The rolling cafe — complete with a washing machine, shower and drink dispenser — rounds out the fleet of big rigs.

At this point in the season, roughly halfway between that early weekend in Rockford and the August championships, things settle into a routine. The trucks are unloaded more quickly, the pre-performance pep talks are more measured. And after crossing time zones and state lines on an almost daily basis, members occasionally even forget where they're performing.

By this point, the Cavaliers' spot in the drum corps pecking order had also come into focus.

Each competition is judged independently, but trends emerge as the same groups go against one another. The Cavaliers started July by winning an event in Kansas, and several days later they placed second at an event in Lisle. Here in DeKalb, up against some of the best groups, they wouldn't place as high, finishing fifth.

The nightly scores, members say, aren't what counts in the scheme of the season. The barometer of a year's competitive success comes largely from how they perform at Lucas Oil Stadium, home of the NFL's Indianapolis Colts, over three nights in early August.

As feedback from judges accumulates, staff members tweak the music or add a move, all in hopes of boosting scores.

That work, Scott said, is tiring, but the experience is invaluable. The music education major hopes to direct a middle school band after graduating next year, one of several members planning to teach.

"I'm taking this experience in and trying to run with it," Scott said after walking off the field at Northern Illinois University. "The whole reason I did this was to help my students in the future."

August

Before long, Scott, Goeden and the others will return to college as the season winds down and life moves on.

Today, though, they're preparing for their last performances in a Cavaliers uniform. The grand finale in Indianapolis, a spectacle that takes over the city's downtown and makes booking a hotel room nearly impossible, is Saturday, when the top 12 groups compete. The Cavaliers have been finalists every year since 1979.

"The emotions are cranking up," Mark Ackerson, the group's tour director, said Wednesday. "The guys are perfecting the smallest details and prepping for the three biggest shows of their life."

Ackerson, who performed two summers with the Cavaliers in the 1980s and has been on staff for about 25 years, said this year's group has improved dramatically since those early rehearsals in Rosemont.

"Back in April, a lot of these guys, especially the new guys, came in without a really good idea of what they were up against and how detailed we were going to be this summer," he said. "Watching them grow and learn that process over the course of the summer has been really a cool thing — watching them realize that they could do so much more than they ever thought they could do."